Director Search Committee town hall meeting - today

The Fermilab Director Search Committee is holding a town hall meeting today from 10 to 11 a.m. in Ramsey Auditorium.

For those who cannot attend in person, the meeting will be streamed live. Search committee members will be available for discussion in the auditorium lobby immediately following the town hall meeting. Employees and users are encouraged to attend.

Feature

DOE grants CD-1 approval to LBNE project

The neutrino beam for the proposed LBNE experiment would travel through 800 miles of earth to a far detector in Lead, S.D. Image: Fermilab

The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday granted Critical Decision 1 approval to the first phase of LBNE, which includes construction of a beamline at Fermilab and a near-surface far detector at the Sanford Lab in Lead, S.D. One of the largest proposed neutrino experiments in the world, LBNE will send neutrinos generated at Fermilab through 800 miles of earth to the South Dakota detector.

CD-1 is the second stage of approval in the DOE process, and according to Project Director Jim Strait, it covers the overall scale of the cost and schedule of the construction.

"This is a significant step, and we're extremely happy to get it," Strait said. "It's a green light for the proposed cost and schedule of LBNE's first phase."

Plans for LBNE underwent three different reviews in the past two months before reaching the desk of William Brinkman, director of the Office of Science, who made the final decision to grant CD-1 approval.

Following those reviews, Strait, Project Manager Elaine McCluskey and the LBNE team worked with Pepin Carolan, project manager in the DOE site office at Fermilab, to create an iron-clad case for approval. It was Carolan who successfully presented that case to Brinkman on Monday.

"Achieving CD-1 is a tremendous milestone for LBNE," Carolan said. "It's a testimony to the dedication and perseverance of the entire LBNE project team, the collaboration and the partner labs."

For Brookhaven National Laboratory's Milind Diwan, one of two spokespeople for the LBNE collaboration (the other is UC Davis' Bob Svoboda), Monday's approval is an important milestone after more than a decade of work.

"It's a very good day for everyone," Diwan said. "We are all very happy that the U.S. has committed to a fundamental research program of a scope appropriate for our country."

Diwan said CD-1 approval will also attract new collaborators from other countries. This approval shows the determination of the Department of Energy to carry out this important experiment and will increase the trust that is needed for foreign partners to invest in U.S. facilities, Diwan said.

"We need an exciting project so our friends from abroad will be willing to join with us on great science," Diwan said. "This level of commitment is very important and makes us more attractive as partners."

The next planned milestone for the project will be initial construction for the beamline at Fermilab, slated to begin in 2015. CD-2 approval, the next stage of the DOE process, is expected in spring of 2016. The experiment is scheduled to begin taking data in 2023.

—Andre Salles

Photo of the Day

Great Nebula in Orion as seen by the Dark Energy Camera

Yesterday we ran a photo of the Great Nebula in Orion taken with an amateur telescope and a telephoto lens. Today's photo is also of the Great Nebula in Orion, taken last month with the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile. The data used to produce this photo was processed at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory using the DECam Community Pipeline, software that was written by the Dark Energy Survey Collaboration for use by the astronomy community. Learn more about these images.

In the News

LHC sees odd behavior in superhot particle soup

From Science News, Dec. 5, 2012

Strangely behaving subatomic particles at the world's most powerful particle accelerator could lead to fresh insight into how matter behaves at the smallest scales and highest energies.

Ordinarily, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva sends protons hurtling into each other at velocities approaching the speed of light. But for several hours in September, the machine collided protons into lead nuclei—tightly packed bundles of 82 protons and 126 neutrons. It was merely a test run, designed to calibrate instruments for future experiments.

But when physicists with the Compact Muon Solenoid collaboration analyzed the data, they quickly noticed that something was amiss. When a proton and lead nucleus collide, they shatter into smaller particles that jet out in all directions. The movement of each piece of shrapnel should be almost completely random; the direction of one particle should provide no clue to that of any other. Yet during these collisions, the particles' directions tended to correspond to one other. Even particles located far from each other seemed to be coordinating their paths of travel.

Master planning

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

I've devoted many Director's Corners to the scientific vision for Fermilab, laying out the path toward a world-leading set of facilities at the Intensity Frontier. This path, which starts from our current facilities and neutrino experiments, goes through NOvA and the muon campus, and continues on to the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment and Project X, became even clearer yesterday with DOE's granting of CD-1 approval to the first phase of LBNE.

But in order to meet our long-term scientific goals, we must also develop clear long-term goals for the development of the Fermilab site. This is the job of a new task force that has been established to develop a campus master plan. Such a plan will describe a set of guiding principles for the laboratory to follow as we imagine the future of Fermilab programmatically, functionally, aesthetically and environmentally.

Creating this plan will be no easy feat. The last time Fermilab produced a comprehensive master plan for the site was more than three decades ago. Many things have happened since that time, including the construction of the Main Injector, the NuMI and MiniBooNE neutrino beamlines and the deactivation of the Tevatron and some fixed-target beamlines. Moving from the Fermilab of today to the laboratory we want to have in 20 years will require careful analysis and far-reaching thinking.

As we look to the future, programmatically we want to have the kind of aspirational and inspirational environment that fosters collaboration, allows us to tackle powerful experiments on our site and at remote locations, and preserves the ability to lead at the Energy Frontier in the future. Functionally, we need to understand the most effective use of the various areas and functions of our site. One project already planned with DOE is the consolidation of the village shops in the industrial areas. Other ideas abound, including specially designed and optimized facilities for engineering and detector R&D.

Aesthetically we need to preserve the beauty of the site. The landscape is one of our greatest assets and it needs to harmonize with the facilities and buildings that we must build to carry out our research program. Environmentally we have to develop the site in a way that is sustainable, with energy-efficient buildings, minimal energy and water use, managed and minimized tritium when it results from high-intensity operations, and the use of agricultural operations and restored prairie to enhance the environment.

All this makes for a greatly interesting and challenging effort. I am very appreciative of the work carried out so far by FESS and task force members, as well as by University of Chicago and Illinois Institute of Technology architects who are bringing their skill and experience to our site planning.

Construction Update

LArTF brickwork, stairways completed

The exterior masonry of the LArTF cylinder has been completed. Photo: Cindy Arnold

Whittaker Construction Company, contracted to construct the Liquid-Argon Test Facility, and their masonry subcontractor, Cyberdyne, have completed the exterior brickwork covering the main cylinder of the LArTF. The brick matches that used on the MINOS Building spiral, creating an architectural unity among the neutrino detector facilities. The loading dock area is visible on the left of the cylinder and the electronics room on the right. The precast concrete walls will remain exposed after painting. Workers are forming the footings for a base pad for ventilation and air conditioning equipment in the foreground.

Cyberdyne has built two enclosed stairways inside the cylinder. The picture below shows the work on the first stairway during construction. A large platform (yellow framing) that could be jacked up was used as a rising work surface. The picture below was taken from the base of the second stairway prior to the start of its construction. After the first stairway was completed, the work platform was turned and moved to provide access to the second stairway. The walls for both stairways were completed on Dec. 7. The platform is now being removed.

This picture was taken standing 40 feet below ground level on the floor of the LArTF cylinder. One of the two enclosed stairways is shown under construction; it has since been completed. An extreme wide-angle lens was used for this picture, producing a curved image. Photo: Cindy Arnold